The Week in Conspiracy (31 Oct 2011 edition)

Hello, hello from the city where pants are optional, New Orleans. I gave my talk about anti-Jesuit and anti-Catholic conspiracy theories yesterday, and then we bopped along Canal Street to the Smarti Gras party.

I know that when I need medical advice, I go to a strung-out, obviously intoxicated rapper. I mean, not me, Vigilant Citizen:

How one person decided to let go of reason and embrace the space brothers. I suspect that there is a very good chance that any story that starts, “I was a skeptic,” is being told by someone who wasn’t. Especially when it includes: “The last documentary I watched was a lecture by Linda Moulton-Howe on cattle mutilations. I could not believe what I was seeing. The question in my mind very quickly became not whether UFOs existed – they clearly did – but what they were.” You and skepticism are not even nodding acquaintances.

Artsy NYT writer doesn’t care who wrote Shakespeare. Which is fine. The reason I fuss about it because adopting the conspiracy theory is to reject evidence freely available to anyone with a library card. When you toss out the evidence, you can say whatever you like, and Oxfordian nutters do. But you can’t call that learning or time well spent.

“In London, the Flat Earth Society explains that we live on a giant disk. In Petersburg, Ky., the Creation Museum shows cave men and dinosaurs frolicking together. And in a movie theater near you, “Anonymous,” which opened Friday, reveals how the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare’s plays.”

The arguement that mankind originally came from the pleiades as been a long standing piece of “wisdom” from believers in ancien t astronauts since the 1950’s.

I do like the sound of Anonymous sinking, but I’m annoyed at the occasional positive reviews. I also admit Marlowe as Shakespeare would indeed have been much better, espe3cially since Marlowe actually wrote really good plays. Dr. Faustus anyone?